Using the tado° Geolocation Feature

28.11.2013

I’m Chris and I have been using all versions of tado° since winter 2010.
This article is meant to share my personal insights but also the experience of other customers.

A few years back my heating was running 24/7, despite the fact that I was hardly ever there. I hated the idea of wasting energy when I was away for work or on a weekend trip.
Life has become much better since I started using tado°. When I’m away from home, I see on the app that tado° has lowered the temperature to save on energy. It really feels good to know that somebody else is taking care of things and making sure energy is used efficiently. As soon as I start heading home, tado° turns on the heating. It’s a great moment when I walk in and I feel that the air has recently been heated up - just for me. I hope you guys have a similar experience.

Continue reading to understand how tado° works best in your personal situation.

Balancing energy savings & comfort

Did you know that there’s a slider in the settings that allows you to set your preferences from “Full Comfort” to “Maximum Savings”?

I have set mine to “Maximum Savings” (leaf symbol), It saves more energy however my room temperature is usually about two degrees below my set point the moment I arrive at home. I personally don’t feel it, and by the time I sit down on the couch, the temperature has reached its “optimum” level.
However, if you prefer you can move the slider towards “Full Comfort” (person symbol). Try experimenting with these comfort settings yourself.

Tip for your daily life: when you’ve had a long day in the office and you’re already looking forward to your warm pillow, change tado° to “Full Comfort”. It will be warm and cosi when you arrive back home -but don’t forget to set it back to “Maximum Savings” as soon as you get home.

The technology behind the geolocation feature

In a nutshell: the further you are away from home, the lower the temperature at home.
The parameters which best work for your home are determined by the tado° algorithm and are optimised on a daily basis.

Making it work on your phone

-You have an iPhone and you have terminated the app. For precise control, please don’t stop the app / don’t swipe it away (see picture)

-Your location services or Wifi are not activated

-Correct app refresh settings. iOS7 contains a new setting that allows you to switch off background processes (on a per app basis). For tado° to function effectively, your settings must be set
as shown(see picture).

-You have not yet downloaded the latest tado° update

- You live in an area with very few mobile towers and few Wifi networks around you.

-You have an old Android version (below V2.3.3) or an iPhone 3GS

If all else fails, call our help line and we will adjust the home zone radius for you (in the near future, you’ll actually be able to do this yourself).

reason 1

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What’s next for you in development

We are continuously improving the geolocation algorithm for you with every update.
Rest assured that we will further improve usability and include ways to manually adjust the control.

Usage of mobile data & battery power

How much data does tado° use?
The answer is: 5 - 15 MB per month.
For some Android phones we had some traffic issues in the past. We have fixed these issues in the latest update.

How much battery power does tado° consume?
This is difficult to answer since it depends on what you compare it to.
If you always had your location services and Wifi switched on, then tado° is not draining your battery significantly faster. If you had these service switched off before using tado°, you will need about 20% more battery power. The next iOS and Android version will consume even less power.